Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what checks are done as standard in the award of contracts by his Department to identify and disclose any award of Government contracts to entities (a) owned or controlled by Government ministers or senior civil servants and (b) where such persons have a significant beneficial interest.

As a contracting Authority as defined in the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, MHCLG complies with its legal obligations when assessing tender proposals and the organisations bidding for opportunities.

Companies submitting tenders for work are also required to declare any conflicts of interest as part of their tender and these are assessed in relation to the specific requirement.

The standard checks MHCLG undertakes when awarding contracts depends on the procurement procedure we use to award the contract. Where we undertake a stand-alone procurement, we carry out checks for conflicts of interest and grounds for exclusion as defined in Regulations 24 and 57 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and by Procurement Policy Notice 01/2019.

Where we buy services through an existing Government framework agreement, these checks will have been undertaken by the relevant Contract Authority - for example Crown Commercial Service – at the time they put the framework agreement in place.

We require staff involved in any tender evaluation to declare conflicts of interests before engaging in that process. Any declared conflict of interest would typically result in an individual being excluded from the evaluation on proprietary grounds.